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Unleash nuclear weapons on Ukraine, Chechen ally tells Putin

Latest defeat is humiliation for Putin a day after he announced the forced annexation of four regions

By Campbell MacDiarmid and Will Hazell

RAMZAN KADYROV, the Chechen leader and key Kremlin ally, yesterday called on Vladimir Putin to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine in the wake of another embarrassing military defeat.

His comments marked the first time a Russian official has openly and explicitly called for the use of atomic bombs in Ukraine.

Moscow admitted that its troops had withdrawn “to more advantageous lines” to avoid encirclement in the strategic eastern city of Lyman in Donetsk, just a day after Mr Putin proclaimed the annexation of that region and three others.

The abandonment of the territory which the Kremlin had declared part of Russia a day earlier prompted Mr Kadyrov – a stalwart Putin footsoldier – to urge an intensification of the war, saying he was “unable to remain silent”.

“In my personal opinion, more drastic measures should be taken, right up to the declaration of martial law in [Russia’s] border areas and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” Mr Kadyrov wrote in a post on Telegram.

Until now, Russian leaders have only obliquely threatened the use of nuclear weapons. In an address last week, President Putin said he was not “bluffing” when he said that Russia had “various weapons of destruction” at its disposal and would use “all the means available”.

Russia has the world’s largest atomic arsenal, including low-yield tactical nuclear weapons that are designed to be deployed against opposing armies.

On Friday the Kremlin announced that any attack on annexed Ukrainian territory would be treated as an attack on Russia.

Senior Conservative MPs said that the threat should be taken seriously.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader who is a candidate to be the next chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, told The Sunday Telegraph: “He wouldn’t be saying this if he hadn’t been authorised by Putin.”

Sir Iain said that Russian military tactics had always considered nuclear weapons to be “war-fighting weapons, whereas in the West we see them solely as weapons of escalation and therefore we wouldn’t use them”.

“I wouldn’t underestimate the possibility that he could use these weapons. That’s not just an empty threat.”

However, the West had to “double down” in its military and economic support to Ukraine.

Tobias Ellwood, the chairman of the Defence select committee, said that allies including the UK had to “agree our kinetic conventional response to Putin detonating a single tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine”.

Mr Ellwood said such a “grave threshold cannot be crossed unpunished” but “neither should we be spooked by the increased rhetoric”.

The United States has directly warned the Kremlin that Russia will face “catastrophic consequences” if it deploys nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said last week that the US had “communicated directly, privately to the Russians at very high levels” how it would respond in the event of Moscow using atomic bombs in Ukraine.

“If Russia crosses this line, there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia. The United States will respond decisively,” Mr Sullivan said.

‘I wouldn’t underestimate the possibility that he could use these weapons. That’s not just an empty threat’

RUSSIA admitted it had withdrawn from the key eastern city of Lyman yesterday in the face of “significant superiority in forces and means”, handing Ukraine another major battlefield victory.

Video posted online yesterday shows Ukrainian troops entering the city in the north of Donetsk, a region that President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed the day before.

In the footage, two grinning Ukrainian soldiers are seen raising the country’s blue and yellow flag by the welcome sign at the entrance to the city. “October 1. We’re unfurling our state flag and establishing it on our land. Lyman will be Ukraine,” one of the soldiers says, standing on the bonnet of a military vehicle.

Russia’s defence ministry announced that its troops had withdrawn “to more advantageous lines” to avoid encirclement in Lyman, which had been a logistics and transport hub for Russian forces in the occupied Donbas region.

It claimed without evidence that it had inflicted heavy casualties on advancing Ukrainian forces by launching “massive fire strikes” against them.

But it also admitted that Ukraine had gained the upper hand. “Despite the losses suffered, the enemy, having a significant superiority in forces and means, introduced reserves and continued the offensive,” it said.

The announcement came a day after Mr Putin proclaimed that Donetsk and three other Ukrainian regions were now part of Russia “forever.” He said: “I want to say this to the Kyiv regime and its masters in the West: People living in Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and

Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens forever.”

The humiliating defeat prompted his loyal footsoldier Ramzan Kadyrov to urge an intensification of the war.

“More drastic measures should be taken, including the declaration of martial law in [Russia’s] border regions and the use of low-yield nuclear weapons,” said Mr Kadyrov, the leader of Russia’s Chechen republic.

Mr Kadyrov, who has been critical of Russia’s progress in its invasion, blamed the defeat on local commander Colonel General Sergei Lapin.

“The Colonel General deployed mobilised fighters of the LPR [Luhansk People’s Republic] and other units near Lyman, but did not provide them with the necessary communications, coordination and ammunition supplies,” Mr Kadyrov said, accusing the general of being “nowhere near” his troops.

The defeat would undermine Mr Putin’s goal of capturing the industrial Donbas region, said Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern forces.

“Lyman is important because it is the next step towards the liberation of the Donbas. It is an opportunity to go further to Kreminna and Sievierodonetsk, and is psychologically very important.”

Moscow used Lyman as a transport hub and its recapture represented Kyiv’s biggest victory since a major counteroffensive in the north-eastern Kharkiv region last month.

The Ukrainian military claimed to have encircled thousands of the Kremlin’s troops in Lyman – using loudspeakers to broadcast messages calling on surrounded soldiers to surrender.

Mr Cherevatyi said that previously there were “around 5,000 to 5,500” Russian troops in the area, but military action could have “reduced” their numbers. It is not known what has happened to the soldiers. At least one Russian convoy withdrawing from the city was destroyed by Ukrainian forces, according to video shared online.

“Russian convoy was trying to get out of encirclement unsuccessfully, taking their looted things with them,” said Ukrainian government adviser Anton Gerashchenko, who shared the video on his Telegram channel.

Pro-Moscow military bloggers claimed that Russian forces had withdrawn in a planned retreat.

“It became obvious that a decision had been made to withdraw troops and withdraw from Lyman,” the blogger Rybar wrote on Telegram.

A day after he hailed the annexation of Ukrainian territories, Mr Kadyrov bemoaned the recent string of battlefield losses. “Yesterday there was a parade in Izyum, today a flag in Lyman, and what tomorrow? Everything would be fine if it weren’t so bad.”

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